"Heavy Strat" - My First Guitar Build
This is the first guitar ever built by me. It started when I entered a guitar course. The course was about playing the guitar, but I wanted to go the full way out - to build one too. So, the planning started with searching the eBay for suitable material to work with. As this was the first time, I planned to use a raw but pre-cut body and a prefabricated neck. The eBay-search ended up with a heavy ash body from Ireland (and it is really heavy - therefore the name). The neck ended up to be a standard Strat-replacement neck by Mighty Mite with 22 frets.

The body was pre-cut and pre-routed for a HSS-pickup configuration and rear-access electronics. The ash got a very nice pattern, so my plan ended up with a see-through paint job. Even if it was roughly finished, I had to do a lot of prepwork to make the body as nice as I wanted. The painting was done with transparent wood stain followed by clear, high-gloss finish.

The pickguard is a custom made 2-piece aluminium design. It was drawn in AutoCAD and then cut at a CNC-machine. The rear covers are also made in that way. The hardware are all standard Strat replacement parts. Pickups are made by Bill Lawrence. The electronics are simlpe - one volume control and a 6-way switch to create all usable combinations of the three pickups. A separate toggle-switch takes care of the splitting of the humbucker.

And so, the mandatory pictures from the build (not a true guide, just some shots during the work and of course the final result):

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